Strength & Courage (The Night Horde SoCal Book 1) (4 page)

Those were the only messages, of course, because civilized people of the twenty-first century used mobile phones. She looked at the clock—almost eleven. And she was drunk. Although she knew he was probably sitting up waiting for her to call him back, she decided that the censure she’d get in the morning for making him wait and worry would be easier than trying to have a sober conversation with him now. He’d want a story about her day that she hadn’t written yet—the clean, happy, I-love-my-new-job version.

Since her parents’ divorce ten years before, and especially since her mother’s remarriage six years before—and possibly still more in the weeks since she’d moved to Madrone—Sidonie’s father had become heavily reliant on her. It didn’t make much sense. He was a dentist with a thriving practice in Orange County, fully capable of running his own life. But he had a rigid way of living and old-fashioned ideas about marriage and family, the role of the husband and the role of the wife, and he had mated for life. After all this time, he still hadn’t been able to get himself settled as a bachelor, or even begin to consider finding a new mate.

Her mother, on the other hand, had had different ideas about marriage and commitment. And now Sidonie had a stepfather younger than some of the men she’d dated, a stepbrother and stepsister who were young enough to be her own children, and a father who might as well be.

She sighed, wishing her brain got as slurry and vague as her body did when she was drunk. But no, all of her thoughts seemed sharp and logical, the pictures in her head considerably clearer than the images her eyes were making out.

She scooted out of her jeans, shrugged out of her sweater, and lay back on the pillows, not bothering to take off her bra or get into one of the comfy old t-shirts she liked to sleep in. Closing her eyes, she gave in to the thoughts her brain wanted to think, the pictures it wanted to show her. Apparently, there just wasn’t alcohol enough in the world to hold them off forever.

~oOo~

She woke just after three o’clock, with the room spinning and her stomach churning in that awful, still-drunk, but here-comes-your-hangover-right-on-schedule way that she’d known intimately during her undergraduate days. So, leaving all the lights off to protect her eyes, she ricocheted her way to the bathroom and made herself sick up anything left. She’d heard it was a myth that puking eased a hangover, but she always felt better afterward. And this time was no exception. When she was done, and she’d brushed again, she felt brave enough to try some ibuprofen. Then she went back to bed with a cool, wet cloth to put over her eyes.

When she sat down again on the side of her bed, she noticed that her curtains were still open. That would suck when the sun came up, so she went over to close them. As she reached to pull one side from behind its brass hook, she saw a big motorcycle across the street, just outside the halo of a sodium arc lamp. She blinked and forced her eyes to focus—yes. A huge bike, she thought, though it faded into the shadows.

There was a man leaning on it, dressed all in black. Bald.

Or with hair so fair and short he might as well be.

She stepped back, her stomach rolling again. Tucker’s father was standing across the street from her house. Tucker’s angry father. Tucker’s angry, biker father with the mile-long violent record and the scary nickname. Tucker’s father who’d thrown a full water cooler across the room. At her.

He was leaning on his bike. Staring at her house.

How had he found her? Like all the caseworkers, she kept her personal information as locked down as she could. She didn’t even have any social media accounts anymore, because they’d said in training that there was no way, even under an alias, to be sure anything she posted couldn’t be tracked. Had he followed her? But her car was still at Harry and Carole’s house.

While she watched, a dark van drove through the circular glow of the streetlight. It made a U-turn, its headlights sweeping the lawns and the street, momentarily casting Tucker’s father in bright relief, and then pulled up behind his bike.

He had an accomplice? Were they going to try to abduct her?

She should call the cops. That was the smart thing. Just call the cops and wait, staying away from the windows. That would be the advice she’d give anyone else.

Yep. That would be the smart thing.

But
fuck
hiding in a corner of her own damn house. That was not the way she was going to start her career—cowering from people angry at
her
because
they
couldn’t take care of their children. Fuck that sideways.

Instead of doing the smart thing, she did the brave thing. She opened her nightstand drawer and pulled out her .38.

CHAPTER THREE

Muse reached up and grabbed his burner off the windowsill before it vibrated off and hit him in the head.

“Yeah.”

“Muse, honey. Sorry to wake you.”

Bibi? Since when did Bibi call his burner? And in the middle of the night? He opened his eyes and sat up. Cliff jumped off the bed, thinking it was time to get up. “Yeah, Mama. What’s wrong?”

“I put Demon to bed at our house tonight, but he’s gone. He’s not picking up. I’m worried, and Hoosier’s on a run.”

Muse was already yanking his jeans back on. “I got it, Bibi. I’ll track him down.” He ended the call and dialed Demon himself. When he didn’t pick up, Muse called Sherlock, the club Intelligence Officer.

“This better be a fucking calamity, asshole.”

“I need a 20 on Demon. He’s off the rez.”

“Shit. You think he went after the junkie?” Sherlock’s voice was much clearer now.

“I don’t know. I’ll head that way now, but can you do whatever you do and pin him down? He’s not answering his burner.” Not answering the burner was bad—Demon was either in trouble, or he was looking to start some. He pulled on his boots and a t-shirt, then grabbed his hoodie off the floor.

“Yeah. I’ll see what I can do. Gimme a few.” And he was gone. Muse shoved the phone into his pocket.

He let Cliff out for a quick piss, then called him in and gave him a ruffle between the ears. “Sorry, bud. I won’t be long.” Then he grabbed his kutte, went out, jumped in the club van he still had, and headed toward Rialto.

When the new Night Horde charter had started up, they’d moved their bike shop from L.A. out into the far suburbs. San Bernardino County was a vast amalgam of tidy bedroom communities, quaint turn-of-the-last-century towns, and downtrodden neighborhoods that had mainly been given over to gangs and dust.

Madrone was one of the tidier bedroom communities, populated primarily by commuters who drove the fifty miles each way to and from their career-track jobs in L.A. It had its wrong side, but for the most part, the neighborhoods and developments were neatly tended, and the residents had block parties and catered yard sales. Pinon Boulevard, the town’s version of Main Street, was mostly made up of pretty strip malls. And, positioned as it was between two mountain ranges, and with the San Jacinto Mountains not far south, the view in almost every direction, on a clear day, was absolutely brilliant. If not for that view, Muse thought the town would be nearly indistinguishable from probably thousands of middle-class communities all across the country.

Where Muse was headed on this night, though, toward Demon’s ex’s apartment, was a different kind of neighborhood in a different kind of town, twenty or so miles, and a whole world, away. Gangs and dust.

He didn’t think there was ever a time that California roads were clear of traffic, but three o’clock on a weekday morning was probably as close as it got. Not for much longer; in an hour or so, the commuters from these far-reaching exurbs would be heading west toward L.A. with their giant travel mugs of coffee. For now, though, Muse almost had the road to himself.

He’d driven about fifteen minutes when Sherlock called back. “I think I got him. 17497 Zinnia Lane. It’s here in Madrone. Signal’s steady. Looks like he’s sitting there, far as I can tell.”

“What’s there?”

“I don’t know, man. Hold up.” There was a pause, and Muse pulled to the side of the road. He could hear a baby crying in the background. Sherlock had an on-off thing with a chick who had a couple of kids. Sounded like they were on tonight. “Residential. Don’t recognize the names at or around that address: Hernandez, Johnston, Berger, Tuladhar, Schmick…”

One of the names rang a bell for Muse, and he got a sick feeling. He’d seen a nameplate on a desk. “Hold up. What was the T one?”

“Tuladhar? Yeah. The first name’s weird, too. Sid…Sid
o
nie, something like that? You know him?”

“Her. It’s French. That’s the social worker took Tucker today—yesterday.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah. I’m on it.”

“You need backup?”

“Nah. But stay alert. I’ll call if I do.” Muse ended the call and swung the van around, headed back home.

~oOo~

When he got to Zinnia Lane and found Demon leaning on his bike, he swung the van around in the narrow street and parked behind him.

The street was in a pretty little residential area, the kind with wide, even sweeps of sidewalk, where everybody had automatic sprinkler systems and enough trust in the world to put matching furniture and fancy gewgaws out on their front porches, safe in the knowledge that they would be left undisturbed. The houses were small but nicely kept—the kind of neighborhood middle-class people were proud to live in.

The kind of neighborhood that might be unsettled by a big biker hanging out in their street in the middle of the night. Muse wondered whether Demon had already been noticed. He got himself ready to deal with cops. The Horde had good relationships with the various powers in Madrone, so he wasn’t especially worried, but it would be a hassle, at least.

He got out of the van and walked up to his friend, shrugging his kutte on as he went. Demon didn’t acknowledge his presence until he spoke. “What are we doing here, Deme?”

“Waiting.”

He stared steadily across the street. Muse followed his gaze to the little bungalow. Typical, Spanish-style stucco with a red-tile roof. Three arched casement windows in a row next to a small turret with an arched oak door. The porch light was on, showing a cute little flower garden in the yard along a low front porch with wicker furniture and colorful flowerpots. A chick definitely lived there.

“What are we waiting for?”

“Bitch to get home.”

Not to encourage him on his fool mission but to keep him talking, Muse asked, “You sure she’s not? It’s three o’clock on a Friday morning.”

“No car. I checked her garage. She’ll be home. I’ll wait till she is.”

“And do what?”

“Get my kid back.”

“Pretty sure she doesn’t have him with her, Deme.”

Now he stood up from the bike and turned to Muse. “Don’t be an asshole. I know Tucker’s not with her. But she’s the one with the fucking file. Nobody’ll give me a chance. Whatever happened with Kota, it’s their fucking fault. He should’ve been with me. She knows where he is. She can get him. I’m gonna make her bring him back. I’m gonna make her give me a chance.”

“How, brother?”

Demon’s emphatic resolve faltered a little and he looked back over at the pretty little house. “I…I’ll talk to her. Make her see.”

“It’s a decent plan, Deme. But not outside her house in the middle of the night. We’ll go to her office when she’s working. You’re just gonna scare her standing out here like this. That’s not gonna help your cause.” He put his hand on Demon’s back. “C’mon, brother. Let’s head out. You can crash on my couch for a couple hours.”

Demon didn’t respond, but Muse thought he was coming around. And then the front door of the house in question opened. Car or not, it looked like the little social worker was home, after all. Demon went stiff and took a couple of steps into the middle of the street. And then he stopped cold.

So did Muse. Sidonie Tuladhar was storming off her porch and across her lawn.

She was wearing nothing but a pair of flowered panties and a light-colored bra, maybe pink. And pointing a gun right at them, held in both hands. Looked like an old-school .38.

“What the fuck’re y’doing here? Y’think you c’n scare me? Y’can’t scare me! Get the fuck OUT OF HERE!”

She was drunk. Muse took a breath. There was a lot of bad going on right here. When Demon went forward, toward the drunk chick brandishing a handgun, the bad went to worse. The nearly-naked social worker stopped and locked her legs—looked like she’d taken a handgun class. He put his hands up, but she was staring at Demon. Muse wasn’t sure she’d even noticed him yet.

“If y’think I won’t shoot you in the face, y’can try me!” She was on the sidewalk, in the overlapping circles of the streetlights. The gun shook in her hands, and Muse saw the muscles in her slim forearms bunch as she tightened her grip.

The gun wasn’t manually cocked, though. That might give him some time.

But Demon grinned and reached behind his back, and Muse knew exactly what the fucktard was thinking—he’d seen that the gun wasn’t cocked, too, and he was betting he could draw on her. He’d come carrying. Jesus. “Deme, ease off. We don’t need a shootout. Just put your hands up.”

“You’re outta your mind,” he growled in response, but he held his hand at his hip.

“You gonna shoot a naked girl in her front yard? Is that gonna get Tucker back?”

That got him. Demon relaxed and turned away from the girl. “Fuck.”

“Yeah.” He turned his attention to the girl. “Sidonie. Is that right?”

Her eyes slid to him; she looked surprised to see him—and rightly so. They’d spent a surprising amount of time together in the past fifteen hours. “What?”

“My buddy here is gonna get on his bike and go, okay?”

She still had the gun on Demon, so Muse took a couple of steps toward her. She didn’t change her aim, but she watched him come. “And what are you gonna do?” Her speech was clearing up; adrenaline was probably kicking the booze out of her system.

“I thought we could talk. Smooth this over.” A couple more steps, his hands still up. He was only maybe six feet or so from her now. Demon, finally being reasonable, had stood pat in the middle of the street.

“Talk? Yeah, right. Fuck you. I won’t be bullied.”

He took another step, a long stride, and she decided that he was the greater threat, arms up or not. She swung the pistol toward him, loosening her two-handed hold as she did so. He used the opportunity to lunge in and hit her trigger hand. He gave it a good pop, and the gun clattered to the sidewalk.

But then she came in with her other hand and caught him under the chin—a direct hit to his button with the flat of her hand, sending his head flying sharply backward and dropping him to his ass. She’d rung his bell hard. What the fuck?

Before he could get his wits or his feet back, she had the gun again, and this time, standing over him, she cocked it.

“Mine’s bigger, bitch,” Demon snarled from behind Muse. He didn’t need to look over his shoulder to know that Demon had drawn his Glock. Muse sighed. So much for defusing the situation. He should have taken a couple more minutes to try to talk her out of that gun.

From his new seat on the sidewalk, he said, “Okay. Seeing as I’m the only one on the street of sound mind just now, how about you both listen to me and
put the
fucking guns down
.” Nobody moved. So he looked up at the pretty girl pointing a gun at his head and said, “Have you ever shot anybody, hon? Are you really prepared to take me out? Because if you are, and if you do, my friend will do you the same. But if you’re not, then let’s all calm down and talk instead.” He stood up, and she took two steps backward, letting the gun sag to her side.

He took the gun out of her hand and emptied it.

Now she only looked frightened. She took another step backward, and Muse reached out and grabbed her arm. He couldn’t let her go until he was sure this whole scene wasn’t going to explode in their faces later.

She pulled, and he held, trying to be gentle. “Please, just let me go inside. Don’t hurt me.”

“Just want to talk. Not gonna hurt you.”

Her head pivoted to Demon, who was still drawn on her.